It is dangerous when there has been no earthquake for a long time. So, expect trouble

The earthquake in Turkey and Syria with a magnitude of 7.9 on February 6, 2023, which has already caused the death of more than 25 thousand people in the two countries, again raises questions: when and where do catastrophic shaking of the Earth occur? Can statistics predict the next catastrophes?

Gurban Yetirmishli, director general of the Republican Seismological Service Center under the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, says that short-term earthquake forecasting is impossible, and it is impossible to create directed movements of the earth's crust artificially. They remind us that when analyzing earthquakes, it is better to talk about the strongest shocks, since earthquakes with a small amplitude always occur. After February 6, 100 other aftershocks occurred in Syria and Turkey, which did not lead to the death of a large number of people. It is also wrong to take the number of victims as a basis for analysis, since earthquakes can occur in sparsely populated or deserted places.

Turan has collected the earthquakes on planet Earth over the past century, taking the conditional bar of 7 Richter points. The Tashkent earthquake on April 26, 1966, which had a magnitude of 5.2 was not included in this list.

The table shows that the European continent, the USA and Canada with the exception of Alaska, as well as the African continent "can sleep peacefully", since the underground events occurring there are so weak that they are little mentioned in the scientific geodetic literature.

In this sense, Azerbaijan is lucky. In the last century, the strongest earthquake in Baku was on November 25 in 2000, when only 2 people died from the collapse of houses. The amplitude of two shocks did not exceed 6.8 points.

But next to Azerbaijan is Iran, further Turkey, where earthquakes occur frequently, with impressive casualties among the population. This fact confirms the well-known theory about world lines of tectonic faults. Deadly faults do not pass through the territory of Azerbaijan.

Most of Russia is also located in a calm plane. Yury Vinogradov, Director of the Unified Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences, says that in Russia the dangerous zones are Kamchatka, the Kuriles, Sakhalin, Baikal, the Altai-Sayan Territory, and the Caucasus. "These are the most important areas where earthquakes occur."

Considering the temporal characteristics of earthquakes, one can notice that from 1923 to 2023, the thirties and forties of the last century were a long quiet interval: between 23 and 48 there were no impressive shocks on the planet. An even longer quiet period was the years between the 1965 and 1978 earthquakes. And in 2010-2011 there were four earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 points.

After 2011, there were no powerful earthquakes for 12 years, which gave scientists reason to warn of an imminent catastrophe, since the movements of mega plates in the earth's crust always occur, they run into each other. If there has been no earthquake for a long time, then powerful tremors are approaching. This is what happened on February 6 in Turkey and Syria. The last earthquake was preceded by tremors of the earth's crust of magnitude 5.9 on January 28 in the northwestern part of Iran. And after the earthquake in Syria and Turkey, 2 days later - on February 8, the Sakurajima volcano in Japan exploded. This indicates the global nature of tectonic shifts and divergences. Between Turkey and Japan, the distance is 8.5 thousand kilometers across the Eurasian continent and the Indian Ocean, but the planet reminds that it is a single and living organism.

The long absence of earthquakes in a seismically active zone necessarily indicates an impending danger. Vinogradov claims that there have been no earthquakes in Russia for quite a long time, which means that "something will happen there in the near future." According to Vinogradov, strong aftershocks of magnitude 9 occur on average once every 5-7 years, and magnitude 8 two to three times a year.

“But I want to say that in the last four years we have had a slightly reduced seismic activity. The release of seismic energy on the planet is somewhat reduced. And since everything in our country tends to the average, that is, there is reason to believe that in the next five years seismic activity will be slightly above average, respectively, the number of earthquakes will slightly increase. But where the strongest earthquake will shoot, I can’t tell you for sure, ”commented Vinogradov.

Gurban Yetirmishli, answering the questions of frightened journalists after the events in Turkey and Syria, reassured them, saying that he had no information about the symptoms of an imminent earthquake in Azerbaijan.